Similar personal injury attorneys in Roseland
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
About Dennis Donnelly
Dennis M. Donnelly is a Senior Partner at The Donnelly Law Firm in Roseland, New Jersey, with more than 35 years in practice as a personal injury attorney. He has earned numerous million and multimillion dollar results for clients severely injured due to the negligence of another person, company, or entity. In the area of birth injuries, he has won all six cases he has tried to verdict in New Jersey, including a $14 million verdict, and he also won a verdict for a failure in prenatal diagnosis in New York State for $3.6 million, which was the subject of a New York Times Magazine feature. On October 24, 2019, he obtained a $20 million jury verdict in Union County in Tapia v. Alam, a birth injury case involving a failure to promptly respond to fetal distress; the verdict was allocated as $8 million for disability and loss of enjoyment of life, $11 million for future care costs, and $1 million for loss of consortium to the parents. He has successfully tried ten cases to jury verdicts over $1 million in the past ten years and settled more than 30 cases for over $1 million.
He is a distinguished member of the Inner Circle of Advocates, described by The Washington Post as a select group of 100 of the nation's most celebrated trial lawyers, and served as the organization's past president; he remains on its Board of Directors. He is also a past president of the Northern New Jersey chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates. He has been named to the New Jersey Super Lawyers list every year it has been published from 2015 through 2019, was named Medical Malpractice or Personal Injury Lawyer of the Year for 2012, 2014, and 2016 by Best Lawyers, and in 2022 received the inaugural Jack Wurgraft Award from the Northern New Jersey chapter of the American Board of Trial Attorneys. He earned his M.A. from New York University in 1973 and completed A.B.D. status there in 1978, and earned his J.D. from Rutgers University Law School in 1981.
Proven verdicts and settlements
Cheryl Rhines pulled onto the shoulder of Route 78 in Newark in October 2017 while having a stroke. A New Jersey State Police trooper with about two years on the job read her slurred speech, facial drooping and inability to stand as intoxication, arrested her, and had her taken to a State Police station instead of a hospital five minutes away, delaying treatment by roughly two and a half hours. An Essex County jury found the state liable in January 2025 and put her total damages at $19.1 million, then attributed 40% of her disability to the stroke itself. After that reduction and an adjustment for disability benefits she had already received, the judgment came to $10,882,432.20, and the trial judge refused to disturb it in April 2025. Dennis M. Donnelly represented Rhines, who has global aphasia and can no longer work.
A maternal fetal medicine specialist read ultrasound films four days late, and the Tapias' daughter was delivered four days after she should have been, with permanent brain damage from oxygen deprivation. A Union County jury returned $20 million on October 24, 2018, and the Appellate Division affirmed the judgment in 2020.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
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Proven verdicts and settlements from other Roseland firms
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.